Building a mobility operating system requires leadership of cities, says LADoT

A mobility operating system cannot be privately built, it must be open and governed by cities, according to the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADoT). Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show 2019 in Las Vegas, LADoT general manager Seleta Reynolds described how the authority had published specifications to manage scooters following what she described as an “explosion of private companies”. She explained that the first bucket of application programming interfaces (API) provides consistent
January 10, 2019 Read time: 2 mins
A mobility operating system cannot be privately built, it must be open and governed by cities, according to the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADoT).


Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show 2019 in Las Vegas, LADoT general manager Seleta Reynolds described how the authority had published specifications to manage scooters following what she described as an “explosion of private companies”.

She explained that the first bucket of application programming interfaces (API) provides consistent ways for companies to talk to cities and share information with them. The second bucket of that code puts the LADoT into the product workflow of those communities.

“We are not tapping them on the shoulders and asking them for more data sets; instead we are delivering services that we already deliver today. Eventually, it would be great if we had a creative set of pricing tools, but we can start at the kerb,” Reynolds added.

At the same CES session, ‘Creating Seamlessly Integrated, Connected Mobility Operating Systems’, Scott Corwin, future of mobility practice leader at 1979 Deloitte, warned that a completely open system where people contribute on their own would attract small players over big ones - which leaves the question of how to get to scale.

“The dialogue is really about investment funding as the kind of money it’s going to take is going to be pretty significant - as well as the technical capabilities to do what needs to be done,” Corwin added.

Leon Kalvaria, chairman, institutional clients group at Citi, stated: “We are at the dawn of the age of autonomous. There will be some very significant private investors in autonomous as they can see what kind of business model they want whether a fleet model, goods delivery model, and that may provide the opening for that kind of dialogue.”

Urban Traffic Control

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Microsoft predicts ‘pay as you-go’ solution to congestion
    April 9, 2019
    Congestion pricing is the solution to inner city traffic gridlock, according to Microsoft’s chief economist, Michael Schwarz. Speaking at the IBTTA’s Annual Technology Summit in Orlando, Florida last week, Schwarz said “traffic will be a thing of the past”, citing the difference between the traffic volumes in the free use and managed lanes as evidence. He also highlighted Singapore’s plans to have satellite tolling on all cars in 2020 and noted that almost all new cars are already fitted with SIM car
    Read More
  • Bird enables reports of poorly parked and damaged e-scooters
    November 15, 2018
    Bird is to roll out an app feature which allows people to report poorly parked or damaged electric scooters to the company. It is an attempt to solve one of the biggest bugbears surrounding the deployment of scooters and dockless bikes – the issue of what happens when users abandon or abuse the vehicles. Bird says the app’s new ‘community mode’ will improve parking and safety in the cities where it operates, such as Portland and Salt Lake City. The company will use reports to reposition poorly parked e-
    Read More
  • Ride-hailing and taxi drivers could face tougher criminal checks in England
    February 14, 2019
    Drivers who ply their trade on apps such as Uber could be under greater scrutiny as part of proposals being put forward by the UK government. The potential risk to passengers from the explosion of ride-hailing apps, as private-hire drivers are perceived to receive less thorough vetting – for example, to flag up past convictions – has long been argued. Incidents such as the murders of passengers by a Didi driver in China heightened such concerns - although critics point out that a US Uber driver who ad
    Read More
  • ANPR integrity is as important as capability
    February 1, 2012
    Increasing the capability of automatic number plate recognition should go hand-in-hand with efforts to ensure number plates' integrity, says the ESVA's Viv Nicholas. Before we apply increasingly sophisticated technology to Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), says the European Secure Vehicle Alliance's (ESVA's) executive director Viv Nicholas, there is a lot we can do to make the task of vehicle recognition simpler by addressing issues relating to the number plate itself.
    Read More

Highlighted Content